LESSON 10 September 2-8
Conditions for
Receiving the
Latter Ram
"Repent ye therefore, and be
converted, that your sins may be
blotted out, when the times of
refreshing shall come from the
presence of the Lord; and he shall
send Jesus Christ, which before was
preached unto you: whom the heaven
must receive until the times of
restitution of all things, which God
hath spoken by the mouth of all his
holy prophets since the world began"
(Acts 3:19-21).
As in the days of Peter, today the
spiritual refreshing of the Holy Spirit
depends upon the preparation of the
people of God. "Repent ye
therefore," said Peter, "and be
converted." And when this full
conversion takes place, the Lord will
not withhold anymore the fulfillment
of His promise of showering upon us
the power of His Spirit in the latter
rain.
The latter rain is indispensable for
the finishing of God's work. It would
be well for us to read again what was
written about the relationship
between the loud cry and the
righteousness of Christ, and how our
people delayed unnecessarily the
coming of Jesus by not receiving that
message more promptly in 1888.
"The time of test is just upon us, for
the loud cry of the third angel has
already begun in the revelation of the
righteousness of Christ, the
sin-pardoning Redeemer. This is the
beginning of the light of the angel
whose glory shall fill the whole
earth."—Selected
Messages,
bk. 1, p.
363. This was published in the
Review
and Herald
on November 22, 1892.
And the servant of the Lord has this
comment on what happened in 1888:
"An unwillingness to yield up
preconceived opinions, and to accept
this truth, lay at the foundation of a
large share of the opposition
manifested at Minneapolis against the
Lord's message. . . . By exciting that
opposition Satan succeeded in
shutting away from our people, in a
great measure, the special power of
the Holy Spirit that God longed to
impart to them. The enemy prevented
them from obtaining that efficiency
which might have been theirs in
carrying the truth to the world, as the
apostles proclaimed it after the day of
Pentecost. The light that is to lighten
the whole earth with its glory was
resisted, and by the action of our own
brethren has been in a great degree
kept away from the world."—Selected
Messages,
bk. 1, pp. 234, 235.
Let us not repeat that mistake today.
Let us prepare our lives for the
reception of the great power of
heaven, and let us rise together to
proclaim the glorious message of the
righteousness of Christ.
•
In this lesson we shall study the
necessary preparation.
DAILY HIGHLIGHTS
1.
Insistent in Prayer
(Luke 11:13)
2.
Repentance and Conversion
(Acts 3:19)
3.
Obedience
(Acts 5:32)
4.
Willingness to Witness
(Acts 1:8)
5.
Unity
(Acts 2:1)
6.
Reception and Belief
(Acts 2:41; 4:4)